a calm voice in the sky

Edel knew he was in thoughtspace, which was different than physicalspace, but he was only six so he didn't really understand what that meant. Slouched in the warm sand, he kicks. But there are other thoughts in his head, and they talk to him quietly, and he understands more, maybe enough. Thoughtspace was inside physical space, although sometimes it was buried deep, like all the skeletons. Deep underwater, and the surface, reality, was very far away, and sometimes the glints of sunlight above that looked like reality weren't, it was still much further away, somewhere else. Edel looks up, he can see the sun, bright, but doesn't look directly into it as it slides slowly through the branches and few leaves of the tree. This thoughtspace was different though, so strong that it was almost real. Something like it had been real before. And now it was here again, it was again, it always would be, splattered hotly over cold space like steam from a steel pipe.

There was a field of long grass before him. He can just see over it. Something comes down from the sky, out from the sky twisting red. It lands and walks off, towering over the mountains on the horizon, but shrinking, fading. It was home, Edel knew, but only briefly, then off again, away for a very long time. It is gone now, faded away, smoke in the wind, and Edel knows. He must leave too. He knows, as strongly and lovingly as it holds him near, that he must break the embrace of gravity, and rise into the sky, to other things.

Had he always known this? Had he known the first time?